Dude, I should totally get 1 generic 128MB 168-pin PC-100 DIMM and a GeForce 3.

You laugh, but this was pretty standard with Dells when they shipped out the computers my company bought back about 8-10 years ago, just as Pentium 4 was becoming big. It's amazing how ungodly slow a computer is on 128 MB. I jacked all those old P4s up to 2 GB RAM and they...well, they don't *fly*, but they kind of ...cruise.

xenomorpheus:I miss the old days of setting dozens of jumpers on my 8086 mobo and graphics cards and sound cards. Glaring at a yellowish monochrome screen for hours typing in BASIC programs,,Switching out memory chips. Configuring the loader files, himemsys, all the fun stuff.

I wasn't even in middle school at the time.

*Internet High Five*

My first computer was a Kaypro 8088 so I went through much of the same stuff and I also was still in gradeschool.

Plant Rights Activist:don't buy your mobo from newegg they don't care what quality they send you and won't refund.

Really? Never had a problem with stuff from Newegg. I've had a couple bad sticks of RAM over the years and have returned them for free replacements.

As far as for what quality they send you, that's YOUR job to do the research for a decent quality mobo, or any piece of hardware. I haven't often heard of Newegg giving anyone a hassle over returns or replacements though.

You wouldn't think being able to get from power off to web browsing in 20 seconds on your desktop is big deal. It is. Loading just your OS on a SSD is worth every penny. The responsiveness of Windows is out of this world. Get a 64gb SSD now. Just do it already.

If you think building a PC is difficult nowdays, you're a whiny little biatch. Back in my day we had to memorize our HD's stats and enter them into the BIOS by hand, then set the proper master/slave jumper and plug it in with a big fragile ribbon cable.

Outlawtsar:OK, so to threadjack about homebuilt PC issues - figure this one out for me:

I'm not sure when it started, but every time I cold boot my homebuilt PC these days, it has to start 3 times. Meaning that it starts, the fans start to spin, but before it posts, it powers down. It does that same set of things again, then it does it again, but instead of powering down, it posts. It doesn't seem to have any problems once it is up, and it can hibernate/come out of hibernate just fine, but why would it do 3 boots (and always 3). I would think a short or something would be more random than 3 every single time.

Is it worth tearing it down and rebuilding from scratch or do I just deal?

Modern/capable motherboard that's trying to auto-detect and test for ram speed/timing but it somehow isn't remembering that? That confounded the crap out of me with the current build(Asus WS Revolution MB + some corsair ram called vengeance or some such), the ram sticks weren't on its official compatibility list so by default the motherboard would attempt to find an optimal setting for it and it'd reboot several times during that process. Resolved by going in and just telling it what timing it should use manually, it stopped doing that.

Magnanimous_J:meyerkev: Here's the short version: The BEST upgrade you can make to your computer today is to get a small 128 GB - 256 GB drive for the OS (I need 256 GB), and any programs you commonly use, and then use the bigger drives to store your data. It just feels snappier.

Would you put games on the boot drive or the storage drive?

It depends.

Putting it on the SSD will reduce load times. (Guild Wars 2 on Desktop HDD: 30 second loading times, Laptop SSD: 10 seconds). In exchange, if you have a 30GB game, you're paying $60 for the game, and $30 for the hard drive space it's on. So it depends on how much you hate loading screens, and how much free space you have on your SSD.

My cpu and mb are coming up on six years old now and doing fine, although I've upgraded RAM, storage space, and the video card since then.

I remember the one thing that always put the fear of God into me was installing the heatsink. Slipping the end of a screwdriver into the slot and prying the tab into place. I always expected to hear a sickening snap as I put pressure on the components.

And as someone mentioned above, trying the squeeze my sausagelike fingers into that tangle of cards and wires to try to put in a new drive, switch out Ram, or just plug in a fan. Hoping you don't break a pin or a board or knock something out of alignment. I'd almost always come away with at least one scratch.

ongbok:xanadian: Also: Building a computer these days, though not for the faint of heart, isn't exactly a Herculean feat, either. Just RTFMs, have a steady hand, and have some patience. If you can't do any of the previous 3, pack that shiat back up, return it, and dude...you're getting a Dell!

It always amazes me how this somehow becomes such an Herculean task that it stumps even the most educated people and causes them to give up on even the easiest of task with the excuse of "I'm not a technician".

500 million people will buy and assemble their own furniture from IKEA but when it comes to putting stuff into slots in a computer - it's rocket science.

/get off my lawn if you haven't had to shoehorn shiat into 640k//and, yeah, I always order my CPU/MB together. Even if you pay a little more for the chip - I've just had too many problems with wonkiness and at least if you get them both together and they don't work, you won't have your chip vendor blaming the MB or vice versa

Building a PC isn't that hard, but there are special obstacles you may not anticipate. A lot of video cards today are freaking huge and may not physically fit in your case (I've also had to remove fans and HD slots to make room for everything). Not everything may come with the right adapters or cords, so expect at least 1 Radio Shack run (unless you have a big Rubbermaid bin full of misc cords and tiny screws like I do). If you buy 7 components, assume at least 1 will be DOA, usually a RAM stick.

My protip: Download your internet and video drivers before you install and keep them on a thumb drive. Trying to operate a PC without a working video driver is painful at best (some MB's come with built in chipsets)

As far as graphics cards go, its way more cost effective to buy a good graphics card (not top of the line) and replace it in 2 years than to buy the absolute best card on the market.

When planning your build, post it on the Asperser's squad over at Newegg.com tech forums and within minutes they will let you know if you have a problem.

Heck, the first PCs I built were 100mHz Pentiums. I would dig motherboards and other parts out of the dumpster behind work and cobble one together. I usually took three or four PCs of parts to build one working PC. I only fried one when I put the CPU in wrong. This was before the CPUs were keyed to fit only one way. I thought I was Pimp Daddy when I built a 133mHz Pentium with 32MB or RAM and on board IDE controllers. (Remember the old ISA IDE cards?)

Outlawtsar:I'm not sure when it started, but every time I cold boot my homebuilt PC these days, it has to start 3 times. Meaning that it starts, the fans start to spin, but before it posts, it powers down. It does that same set of things again, then it does it again, but instead of powering down, it posts.

We have Dell PCs that do the very same thing. New, out of the box PCs. You power it on and just when you think it'll POST, it will power back down. You have to press the button a second time for it it come up all the way. A BIOS flash usually corrects it, but not every time.

Rwa2play:ProfessorOhki: StoPPeRmobile: ProfessorOhki: soopey: Only hard part is trying to contort your fingers to get that fan power plug onto the most improbably placed header ever.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS

Also,[img218.imageshack.us image 614x434]

lol.

That reminds me.

Don't blow your wad on the video card/s. Wait a few months then get it/them.

Unless you don't already have one.

Guilty as charged. I built a desktop recently. My main machine went from being a convertible tablet which wasn't a complete slouch (dual-core 2.4Ghz/4GB RAM was passable for 2008), but the ATI HD3200 was... eeeh. So I was in the mind set of, "I want a desktop and one that will last for a while," and went a bit overboard.

/And that's the story of my GTX680

I'm guessing that your frame rate's aren't that bad however.

/Got a GT 610//Pretty happy with it///Dying to get a SSD

I wouldn't worry about an SSD right now. First, they're still really expensive, and if they crash, there's no possibility to get at the data. Its not like a hard drive where if you REALLY wanted to, someone you reconstruct the plates or recover the files forensically. They're GONE. Second, the only real benefit you would see is in initial startup, as they don't offer much in the way of actually making programs run faster or better. I think eventually (read: 2-3 years tops) we'll start seeing the price come down to something that is much more affordable, and it will be common place for people to get use to creating a boot drive on the SSD and having their programs and files somewhere else.

My current home system is about 5 years old. I built it myself and went way over my needs in the specifications so that it would last at least 5 years. Despite its age, it's still way over powered for the things I do, which is typical online crap and video games. Since I bought it I've had to replace two parts. The video card died, so I was forced to upgrade to a newer and faster model (oh, darn). A few months ago the power supply died and required a replacement. Even if it were under powered, I could just replace the two dual-core processors with quad-cores (yes, the motherboard supports that).

I teach computer building as a kind of fun adult ed class. It's not difficult. I spent about four hours explaining terminology and real-world distinctions between products, go through process of sourcing parts using Newegg and Amazon, give my students some time to figure out what they want and want to do, sign off that they're buying parts that work together (they spend their own money). After that, it takes about 90 minutes to assemble their parts for people who haven't done that before, 20 minutes to load Windows, another 30 minutes to handle drivers and basic software (thank you ninite.com) and a variable amount of time to deal with transferring user data, set up backups and configure weirdo software that's unique to any one student's needs.

In 12 years of teaching computer building classes - including a couple rooms full of developmentally disabled 14 year olds - I've had one person damage a computer part.

It's really not hard and it is a lot of fun.

Homebuilt machines are still cheaper than name brand. The more expensive the systems, the greater the differential. I couldn't touch an 8GB i3 system with an Intel 180GB SSD and 250GB HDD for the $530 it costs me to build one.

Treygreen13:thrasherrr: Outlawtsar: It doesn't seem to have any problems once it is up, and it can hibernate/come out of hibernate just fine, but why would it do 3 boots (and always 3).

Rebooting exactly three times is a symptom of an incorrect Intel Management Engine firmware. It cannot load the saved values, and has to initialize (which takes two reboots) every time. Flash the ME to the level that matches your overall BIOS to cure it.

/Difficulty: Figuring out which level of ME is needed and the proper update procedure for your board will be on the level of learning what John Kerry ate for lunch on a given day in 1967.//The guy who said power supply may be on the right track if it's not the ME firmware

It's been my experience that power supply issues are rarely as consistent as described, but it's definitely one of the first things you should check. Of course he'll know for sure if its a power supply issue if it starts to shut down unexpectedly, but that might take a while to begin occurring.

PSU's can be wonky and not all Mobo's and PSU's get along. One of my older gaming rigs did something similar to Outlawstar's problem, PC ran fine as long as I didn't turn it off, but it was a biatch to get on if I lost power (usually leave my rigs on.) Tried swapping everything but the PSU, it was an 850w on a Core 2 Duo/Nvidia GeForce 285/ 1 HD/ 4GB ram, so I know I had plenty of power capacity. Finally swapped the PSU out as a last resort and haven't had a problem since. Eventually used that same PSU in the same rig, but with a different mainboard/CPU, but same GPU and configuration as above. No problems. Don't know why, but that PSU and Mainboard just didn't get along.

thrasherrr:Outlawtsar: It doesn't seem to have any problems once it is up, and it can hibernate/come out of hibernate just fine, but why would it do 3 boots (and always 3).

Rebooting exactly three times is a symptom of an incorrect Intel Management Engine firmware. It cannot load the saved values, and has to initialize (which takes two reboots) every time. Flash the ME to the level that matches your overall BIOS to cure it.

/Difficulty: Figuring out which level of ME is needed and the proper update procedure for your board will be on the level of learning what John Kerry ate for lunch on a given day in 1967.//The guy who said power supply may be on the right track if it's not the ME firmware

It's been my experience that power supply issues are rarely as consistent as described, but it's definitely one of the first things you should check. Of course he'll know for sure if its a power supply issue if it starts to shut down unexpectedly, but that might take a while to begin occurring.

Outlawtsar:It doesn't seem to have any problems once it is up, and it can hibernate/come out of hibernate just fine, but why would it do 3 boots (and always 3).

Rebooting exactly three times is a symptom of an incorrect Intel Management Engine firmware. It cannot load the saved values, and has to initialize (which takes two reboots) every time. Flash the ME to the level that matches your overall BIOS to cure it.

/Difficulty: Figuring out which level of ME is needed and the proper update procedure for your board will be on the level of learning what John Kerry ate for lunch on a given day in 1967.//The guy who said power supply may be on the right track if it's not the ME firmware

Outlawtsar:OK, so to threadjack about homebuilt PC issues - figure this one out for me:

I'm not sure when it started, but every time I cold boot my homebuilt PC these days, it has to start 3 times. Meaning that it starts, the fans start to spin, but before it posts, it powers down. It does that same set of things again, then it does it again, but instead of powering down, it posts. It doesn't seem to have any problems once it is up, and it can hibernate/come out of hibernate just fine, but why would it do 3 boots (and always 3). I would think a short or something would be more random than 3 every single time.

Is it worth tearing it down and rebuilding from scratch or do I just deal?

Second vote for double checking the power supply. Sounds like the capacitors aren't holding a charge properly, had something similar happened to me in the past. Could also need to re-seat the CPU. If it's not a secure connection, you won't get POST-beeps. But I'd start with PSU.

FormlessOne:xanadian: Also: Building a computer these days, though not for the faint of heart, isn't exactly a Herculean feat, either. Just RTFMs, have a steady hand, and have some patience. If you can't do any of the previous 3, pack that shiat back up, return it, and dude...you're getting a Dell!

This. I've been doing it for over 20 years, and it's ridiculously easy compared to the horrifying maze of compliance & compatibility that it used to be when I started. I regularly build machines - typically, every 18-24 months - for home use, and I've done so at work when needed, as well. Compared to what it was like even a decade ago, it's like playing with friggin' Legos now.

This as well. Ridiculously easy to build nowadays...I think the most difficult part of my last build was getting the add-on RAID controller to work, and that just required 10 min of RTFM.

/CSB//Remembers the bad old days when you had to solder RAM onto the board///My lawn, off of it

miniflea:Built my first system recently after years of buying Dell stuff, and it was stupid easy. I even cheated and bought one of Newegg's package deals. Took me far longer to download and install drivers than it did to actually put the components together.

Built my first system recently after years of buying Dell stuff, and it was stupid easy. I even cheated and bought one of Newegg's package deals. Took me far longer to download and install drivers than it did to actually put the components together.

If placing the parts into their color-coded and labeled parts is too difficult, you can find one of the several companies that will allow you to select all the parts for your computer and then assemble it and ship it to you.

xanadian:Also: Building a computer these days, though not for the faint of heart, isn't exactly a Herculean feat, either. Just RTFMs, have a steady hand, and have some patience. If you can't do any of the previous 3, pack that shiat back up, return it, and dude...you're getting a Dell!

This. I've been doing it for over 20 years, and it's ridiculously easy compared to the horrifying maze of compliance & compatibility that it used to be when I started. I regularly build machines - typically, every 18-24 months - for home use, and I've done so at work when needed, as well. Compared to what it was like even a decade ago, it's like playing with friggin' Legos now.

I learned a lot by building my own PCs, lots of trial and error. The very first time I ever tried I asked the help of a friend who said he was tech savvy, I had my doubts when he went at the motherboard hard with a screwdriver, using it as a lever to work in the heatsink onto the CPU. Lesson 1 was don't let other people touch your stuff, lesson 2 is be gentle and never force anything. I didn't learn that one straight away, though, because I tried upgrading some RAM but didn't realise that you had different types of sockets, I just bought RAM and tried putting it in, and when it didn't go I tried harder, and harder, until I cracked the motherboard. Lesson 3 was learn what everything is so I don't buy the wrong stuff again.

Also: Building a computer these days, though not for the faint of heart, isn't exactly a Herculean feat, either. Just RTFMs, have a steady hand, and have some patience. If you can't do any of the previous 3, pack that shiat back up, return it, and dude...you're getting a Dell!